Index of
Lessons
Home
111 Miracles are seen in light. Miracles are seen in light, and
light and strength are one.
MT: I feel slightly ill this morning, JC. I feel like I need to go back
to bed. And I notice the apprehension: suppose I'm coming down with flu,
and all of a sudden, the illness rules and I must change all my plans
for the week?
JC: Holy child of God, know this: there is nothing to fear.
MT: A part of me welcomes an excuse to do nothing for a week, this much
is true.
JC: You know that you are free to do nothing for a week, you don't need
illness for this. In fact, I recommend the discipline: take to bed for
a week as if you were ill, and practice doing nothing. You have put an
excess of busyness into your life. You long for a time to slow down. Call
it meditation, call it a retreat.
MT: I won't do it. I couldn't possibly do it! Surrounded with reminders
of Things to Do?
JC: Things to Do are extraordinarily unimportant. You give them meaning,
but one hundred years from now, will anyone remember that you failed to
water the tomatoes, didn't reply to Nina, didn't go on a hike or frequent
the gym? Didn't update the website for ID? Didn't send a card to Pat?
Didn't post daily on this board?
MT: Wow. You've got a point. It's only my overblown sense of self-importance
that says I must attend to these things. They are a preference, not an
obligation. I know all this, JC--deep down I know it. But I spend my days
behaving as if, and then the "as if" becomes the rule, and I
follow the rules like a bureaucrat.
JC: You have seen the bumper sticker: Question Authority. Especially your
made-up internal authority.
MT: What synchronicity! This quote just came in with one of Ron's posts:
"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting
concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many
projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the
violence of our times" -- Thomas Merton.
112 Light and peace and joy abide in me. I am as God created
me.
MT: Good morning, JC. How did you sleep?
JC: I take the question is really a greeting. I do not sleep, because
I am not in a body. What do you think about the statements above?
MT: They are self-evident, JC. Of course light and peace and joy abide
in me. I glow like a 15-watt bulb right now, but I know the statement
is true.
JC: The body will do what the body does--get fatigued, perhaps suffer
from eating unwholesome food. Spirit hovers above it all, and knows all
is well in God's world.
MT: I used to make myself wrong about feeling bad, but you're telling
me it is of no concern.
JC: Or only very temporarily. If you are sitting on a cactus, it may be
well to remove it rather than to try to overcome the pain by spiritual
means.
MT: Well, yes, I can see that. To keep eliciting pain is a form of defiance,
a testing of God, a consciously selected miracle, and unworthy of a Son
of God. I am so grateful for the logic you installed in my head.
JC: Today, let light and peace and joy in. You are as God created you.
MT: I am as God created me. Thank you, JC.
113 I am one Self, united with my Creator. Salvation comes from
my one Self.
MT: This is going to be brief, JC. I need to leave the house in forty-five
minutes, and take a shower first.
JC: Brief is good. The Course can be summed up as: GOD IS.
MT: God is, and I am one Self with Him. But, salvation comes from my one
Self?
JC: You have looked for salvation in far corners. You have looked for
salvation where it was not. Now I am pointing out to you where to find
it, so you need no longer search.
MT: So it's not in having lots of money, a great body, being famous, having
a house up on a hill, paparazzi following me for a photo. Salvation is
in a mind that's sewed back together. One-pointedness. Having my priorities
straight: peace of mind comes first, love is the only way to approach
a brother, the first function of a worker of God is to accept Atonement
for himself. What a massive reversal of the way the world thinks.
JC: Be grateful that it is so. This is the way home.
114
115 Salvation is my only function here. My part is essential
to God's plan for salvation.
MT: I've heard this before, so many times. Perhaps I shouldn't be doing
these lessons over and over? You don't recommend that in the book.
JC: No, I don't. I leave it open. I knew most people would feel the need
to keep going through the lessons, as do you.
MT: The world is too much with me, and I forget the Thought of God.
JC: And today's thought?
MT: Let me look at my day. If I were more active, socially speaking, then
I'd meet more people and have more chances to practice my part.
JC: You are doing fine. If it were in your best interests to meet more
people or hold a full-time job, I'd show you the way. Your part, right
now, is to practice contentment. Your busyness is an ego device and unworthy
of a Son of God. When I walked the earth, I did not move about frantically
planning to be somewhere else.
MT: I need your help in being content. I'm always trying to change me.
I have a mania for self-improvement.
JC: Out of where you are, comes that which seeks to emerge, in a natural,
organic development. That is trust. Practice trust today.
116 God's Will for me is perfect happiness. I share God's Will
for happiness for me.
MT: The house is quiet, a fire lights up the room, life is good.
JC: As long as you know that quiet can be frightening, and that fire can
also burn.
MT: The duality of everything on this plane. So where is perfect happiness?
JC: Perfect happiness resides in doing God's will. When your will and
God's are one, nothing can disturb your peace. Walk the world with God,
and you will radiate joy to everyone you meet.
MT: I have met people like that. Arny, and a casual acquaintance whose
name I've forgotten! She, especially, sticks to mind. She was so present.
She was radiant. I wanted to be like that.
JC: She found the key a little before you did. You see the logic of the
two statements above, right? That if God's will is perfect happiness for
you, and if you share God's will, then you must be perfectly happy. It
also gives you a yardstick by which to measure your proximity to God:
if you are not happy, you must not be doing God's will.
MT: I am forever thankful, JC, that you did away with the wrathful God
of my youth. How I suffered under the burden of guilt and fear! I would
not wish that on anybody else. It crushed my spirit. I was born playful
and free, and then darkness descended on my soul, and I did not question
darkness. Darkness was truth, a harsh reality that I must accept in order
to carry on my miserable life.
JC: Welcome to perfect happiness. Those days are gone, and now you can
be free again.
117 God, being Love, is also happiness. I seek but what belongs
to me in truth.
MT: Thanks for this thought, JC. I really made myself miserable yesterday
by procrastinating. I avoided updating the ID website and uploading Carol's
new paintings to her website. Since I spent the whole day avoiding those
two tasks that would have taken two hours at most, I didn't do anything
I really enjoyed, whatever that is. Even watching a movie in the evening
was tainted by the nagging feeling that I hadn't done those two things,
the shame that I might be judged a flake and a non-keeper of commitments.
JC: You spent the day treating yourself lovelessly.
MT: I am confused. Every time I sat down to the computer, the loving thing
seemed to be to play a game of Spider Solitaire! It's instant relief,
to play a game. I feel the relief washing over me when the green screen
opens up.
JC: Look at what's actually happening, instead of your picture of what
should be happening.
MT: Uh? My picture of what should be happening is--I do the work, and
then I feel peace. I relax. I have time to go downtown and browse in the
bookstore, or go for a nice evening walk with Mozart on the mp3 player.
It's really undignified, to spend so much time playing Spider Solitaire!
It doesn't agree with the picture I hold up as myself, the go-getter,
the sparkling, efficient woman who tells these people: "no problem,
I'll have that done in no time at all." I feel like a creep when
I don't do what I promised to do. I slink around like a dog that's eaten
franks off the barbecue.
JC: So you are saying you are long on promise and short on delivery?
MT: You've got it. How can I get out of this pickle? I need to promise
less and deliver more.
JC: Can you forgive the 16-year-old who was left in charge of the house
when mother left? The teen who boldly promised to take care of Father
because she felt she was more sparkling, more efficient than Mother? Can
you forgive your dad for telling everybody you had failed?
MT: That goes back a long ways, doesn't it. Ouch. I need to go right now,
but thanks for the awareness.
JC: God does not call you a failure. The word does not exist in His vocabulary.
You've already gotten an A in this Course.
118 God's peace and joy are mine. Let me be still and listen
to the truth.
MT: Here I am, JC, such as I am, with all my scars. That's quite a promise,
that God's peace and joy are mine for the asking, and that I can hear
the truth merely by being still.
JC: In God's world there are no scars, pimples, bad breath, falling hair,
tooth decay. In God's world, you leave this world behind, along with money,
housing, taxes, relationships, beauty and ugliness, rain and shine.
MT: I used to fear those words, because I was attached to so much. Now
there are only a few stray attachments, at least in theory. I think that
threats to my health and physical integrity would strike terror in my
heart. The movie last night--Hotel Rwanda--I was there, JC. To know that
half a million got chopped to pieces in that beautiful country, in the
streets I walked, hits close to home. I had hoped that humanity had learned
something from two world wars, but nothing seems to have changed.
JC: You can also see how the carnage was only because of ego, no? Human
beings erroneously thinking that killing others kept them safe. It needed
not happen.
MT: Now let me leave those thoughts behind. Let me see the futility of
attack. Let me be still and listen to the truth. I am willing to own God's
peace and joy today.
119 Truth will correct all errors in my mind. To give and to
receive are
one in truth.
MT: Today let me be open to the truth, that to give and to receive are
one.
The minute I wake up, plans for the day inundate my consciousness. I am
willing to take in this truth today, and remember it often. What better
purpose for my day.
JC: All that you give is given to yourself. When you offer forgiveness,
forgiveness comes back to you a thousandfold.
MT: And when I give anger and attack. . .
JC: You tend to receive the same. When you attack, you tempt your brother
to
respond lovelessly. It is his choice, but not a helpful thing on your
part.
Your purpose should never be to educate with a negative example, and excuse
it by saying he needed to learn a lesson.
MT: Forgive me if I laugh. I've excused my angry behavior with exactly
this
line of thought. How sheepish I felt when I yelled at a bad driver and
he
rolled down his window and apologized!
JC: As you go through your day, offer a silent prayer for truth: to give
and
to receive are one, a directionless flow between two Sons of God. You
can
make scarcity, or you can create abundance, peace and joy.
120 I rest in God. I am as God created me.
MT: No need to change anything. No need to improve myself, the world,
my
brother. Today I let all things be exactly as they are.
JC: When there is a task to be done, the Holy Spirit will show you the
way,
as it did me, as it does everyone.
MT: Except I am deaf and blind. The enormity of my resistance to hear
and
see anything different is just becoming apparent to me.
JC: God's Voice is as loud as your willingness to hear. This is where
you
need a miracle. The miracle overcomes the barriers you have set up to
keep
God away, but you need to ask. An uninvited miracle is frightening and
negates your free will.
MT: Today, I rest in God. I allow myself to relax into my original state.
I
let God do the work.
JC: From your mouth to God's ear.
Index of Lessons
Home
|